‘Ready Player One’ Movie Gets First Full Trailer, Book Sequel in the Works

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By
Ben Lang
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Ready Player One, the 2011 novel by Ernest Cline, is getting turned into a movie by none other than Steven Spielberg. As the movie’s March 2018 release date approaches, the first full trailer debuted today. Cline has also confirmed work on a sequel to the novel.

Ready Player One follows the story of Wade Watts, an orphan whose life is centered around a virtual reality metaverse called Oasis. As it turns out, the creator of the Oasis has hidden a key which controls the entire metaverse, leading to a mad dash among users to find the key and assume control.

The Ready Player One movie is due out in March 2018.

Image courtesy Warner Bros Pictures

The Verge reports that, during a livestream reveal of the new trailer, author Ernest Cline confirmed work on a sequel to the Ready Player One book:

[Cline] was asked if it was true that he was writing a sequel. “It’s true. I can’t talk about it too much, but there’s no better inspiration for a writer [than] to return to a world they’ve already worked on when they’re watching Steven Spielberg bring that world to life.” Cline didn’t reveal any other details about what the book would be about or when it would come out, other than to say that he had the chance to bounce some ideas off of Spielberg.

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Ben Lang
Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • Wednaud Ronelus

    This movie will usher in the new brave world of virtual reality. It’s a must read for everyone who is aware of where we are heading in the near-distant future.

    • Richard Hoffmann

      Agreed. The AudioBook is so addictive and read my Wil Wheaton, just the right dude for the job :) I have read the book over 10 times now, and after the trailer probably another time soon… I am building my own Oasis VR as well, just need some millions to speed up the work :)

    • yag

      “where we are heading”
      I hope we won’t have a metaverse where you have to pay to travel or to open a chatroom… It’s just silly and defeats the purpose of VR.

  • Bad

    Too bad the novel is utter trash.. doubt the dude will be any better at writing after getting a hot ego injection from being Spielberg-ized

    • JMB

      Did I understand you correctly in that you consider the novel ‘Ready Player One’ utter trash?

      • Justos

        his name is bad. Clearly a troll

        • Bad

          The ostensible hero of the book is, in fact, the troll.. His only defining trait is an encyclopedic knowledge of a certain range of pop culture. (what Cline likes, basically) He has no arc or growth and wins the day by continuing to be a trivia repository

          The whole message of the book, if it even intentionally has one, is that you don’t have to be particularly brave, kind or smart to be a hero, you just have to be really smug about being able to recite all the dialogue in WarGames

          This is on top of how its female characters are thinly sketched plot devices and best and trophies at worst, plus some pretty bad racial caricatures that pop up here and there

          • Bad

            Here’s a quote from it that’s pretty telling of how he thinks of women

            “I watched a lot of YouTube videos of cute geeky girls playing ’80s cover tunes on ukuleles. Technically, this wasn’t part of my research, but I had a serious cute-geeky-girls-playing-ukuleles fetish that I can neither explain nor defend”

            Fetish objects, not worth much other than vaguely motivating the tremendously boring main character (he’s in good company! Boring characters abound!)

            There’s a pretty good readthrough of the book here, if you feel like actually analyzing the novel instead of reactively defending it because you got hit by some of its shotgun blast of nostalgia bait

            http://372pages.com

  • I can only say: COOL!

  • J.C.

    That trailer puts to rest any concerns that it was gonna be underfunded. SO much of the story takes place in the Oasis, and I was worried they were going to try to make physical sets for the actors to be inside of that would look…well, too real.

  • AndyP

    I’d be a lot more impressed if I could watch it in VR, but I guess that’s going to be a while (size of audience). At least it’s another step toward mainstream.

  • yag

    It will make a nice teen movie with nice action scenes.
    Now if someone could adapt “Neuromancer” or “Snow Crash”…